Tackling Tuesday

I am trying to get things accomplished around here and I am pretty happy with the results.  I am picking out the things that bug me about this place and trying to fix the ones I can.  I rearranged my kitchen and it is much more user friendly right now. I have fixed a sort of island in the kitchen to divide to it into two parts, one part is the kitchen and the other the classroom.  It actually works really well and doesn't look cluttered or crowded.

I rearranged the living room and it looks more put together.  The bonus is that now the heater is uncovered so that we can get more use out of them now that the weather is getting colder. 

I also rearranged my bedroom.  It looks bigger, more organized and more welcoming. 

I can't fix the neighborhood and the fact this weekend there was two stabbings around the corner from us is unsettling, but I do like the house better . . . . now if I could get my washer working again.

Tackle it Tuesday - The Fridge

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My tackle for this week is another one I have been putting off.  Cleaning my fridge.  I am the only one who does this and it gets quite disorganized and messy.  So I emptied it, cleaned it, and organized it.

Here is my fridge before:

Here is my fridge after:

Cinnamon Bun Bread Pudding

3 cups milk
6 - 7 cups cubed or torn stale bread
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or more to taste
5 eggs, lightly beaten
(would be good with added raisins but was a huge hit just like this)

Glaze
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon


Combine the milk , sugar, salt, cinnamon, and eggs. Place bread cubes in a bowl; pour over bread. Cool. Pour mixture into an 8-inch square baking dish. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 25 to 35 minutes, or until set. Pour Glaze over top while still warm. (I made a HUGE batch of this and it was still gone by sundown!)

Tackle it Tuesday - The Yard

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My tackle for this week was the yard.  I got outside and cleaned up all the junk that had made its way into our yard over the winter.  The neighbor kids like to leave junk there and so does Princess Belle.  So now that is one more thing checked off of my moving list and my yard looks lovely! 

Yesterday I went through my closet and packed most of the stuff in there that was not in boxes. 

Next, I have to get more boxes and get the rest of the stuff packed.  I also want to go through the things we have stored to get that take care of too.  My to-do list is long but I am taking care of it one thing at a time. 

banana, apple, oatmeal muffins

makes 1 dozen muffins
(I have to double this because 1 dozen is never enough of these at my house!)

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 cup sugar (I used a sweetener instead and it was really good!)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 apple grated
1 mashed banana
1/2 cup water
1 cup flour
3/4 cup instant oatmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup chocolate chips or raisins (I made these this time without either of these)
1 pinch salt

(I have also tried these with two bananas and no apple, this was a HUGE hit in our home!)

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2.Grease 12 muffin cups.
3.Whisk eggs, brown sugar, apple, cinnamon, vegetable oil, banana and water together in a bowl until smooth.
4.Stir flour, oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda, chocolate chips and salt into wet ingredients to form a batter. Fill the prepared muffin cups with batter.
5.Bake in preheated oven until tops are golden brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

 

 

Tackle it Tuesday - The Truck

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My tackle for this week is something I have been putting off.  I am nervous about it and I feel like I don't really know what I am doing, but a friend is taking me on a 3 hour drive to Yarmouth to do all the necessary paperwork to sign the truck over to the mechanic there.  If you remember, we were very excited to get this truck only to have it break down on our first long trip in it, leaving us stranded for 2 days in a town 3 hours away from home and the repairs were so far out of our budget that we had to leave the truck there and take a bus home.  Between the truck, the hotel, the gas, the food and everything we spent that week, that truck ended up costing us about $2000 that is now being signed over to the mechanic instead of paying for the repairs that would cost more than twice what we paid for the truck.  So today I am going down there and taking care of the final paperwork to get rid of that awful thing.  I just wish it hadn't happened when we were working so hard to get the funds together to move.  I really didn't need that loss.  It took every bit of savings we had and now we are starting over saving for our move and it is less than 2 months away!

 As a sidenote, we will get another vehicle in the future, but we will have to wait for a few months after our move.  So now we will spend the first 6 months in our new home, walking everywhere we want to go (with 4 kids!)

Oh well, maybe at least it will be a fun day, 2 moms out on the road for about 6 or 7 hours while the dads are each at their own home taking care of their babies!

Coconut Scones

 

•  2 cups all purpose flour
•  1/4 cup sugar
•  1 1/2 tsp baking powder
•  1/4 tsp salt
•  6 tbsp butter, chilled and cut into 6-8 pieces
•  1/2 cup sweetened, shredded coconut
•  approx. 1/2 cup coconut milk 

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add butter and toss to coat.
3. Using your finger tips, rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles very coarse sand. A few larger bits are ok, but most should be smaller than a pea. Stir in shredded coconut.
4. Add in about 1/3 cup of coconut milk and stir into dough with a fork. Add remaining coconut milk as needed until dough comes together into a shaggy ball. Knead lightly with your hand until dough is smooth.
5. Divide dough in to two balls and press each into a disc about 1/2-inch thick on prepared baking sheet. Cut each disc into quarters and separate slightly.
6. Bake for about 15 minutes, until scones are a light golden brown on top.
7. Cool on a wire rack before serving.
8. Makes 8.

 (I didn't make them into triangles, so mine looked like drop biscuits, but they taste just as yummy!)

 

 

 

Tackle it Tuesday - Packing

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My tackle for this week is an on-going project, but it felt good to get a good start on it. We are moving in about 2 months and I have officially started packing in ernest.  I have been packing the occasional box here and there, when they came into the house, but I have a goal that from now until I am done packing, I am going to pack some every day.  I did quite a few today. 

Here is some of what I have done.

 

Tackle it Tuesday - Cleaning

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My tackle for this week has no picture.  But it has really been working for me and I wanted to share it.  It is a change in my schedule.  When we were stranded in Yarmouth, in a hotel, I noticed the maid going around cleaning.  Now she didn't clean our room until we left but I thought about the fact that as a maid she takes some time every day to clean the rooms.  She has a set schedule and a list.  So I thought about our home and came up with a new way of scheduling how I am doing things the things I usually do.

In the mornings before the crowd gets up (usually Little Prince is up with me for this) I do the following:

• prepare supper, put in the slowcooker or prepare it to go in the oven
• prepare breakfast for the family (usually baking or oatmeal of some kind)
• Do one load of laundry.

In the evenings after the kids go to bed I do the following:

• gather all the toys that the kids have been playing with and put away
• gather all the dishes that have been left around from various snacks and wash them up and put them away
• thoroughly sweep and wash the floor
• clean the bathroom, washing the floor, sink and toilet every day and the tub every couple of days
• gather laundry to go to the laundry room
• gather garbage and recycling and put it out
• Do a basic clean in the kitchen.

Then once a week, I do the following:

• clean the girls room,
• clean the fridge and stove
• clean any other areas that need it

This schedule takes me some time in the morning when I am fresh and about an hour at the end of the day before I relax for the evening.  I have been doing this for a few days now and it is very manageable and it is so nice to wake up to nice clean, organized home every morning. I love having already cleaned it up so that I can put Little Prince on the floor to play while I do my morning chores, instead of having to clean first and then do that.  It is great that with the investment of about an hour in the morning and a hour ing the evening, I am able to keep on top of things all day long.

Tackle it Tuesday

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About six months ago, I replaced my coffee perk.  I love my new perk, but for some reason, the glass carafe got really really stained, really quickly!  I tried cleaning it with plain dishsoap and and water, but nothing happened at all.  So I did some research.  I found a number of ways to clean glass coffee pots. 

 

Here is what I started with (gross, I know!):

 

 

 

The first method I tried was combining hot water and comet and swishing around inside the pot.  After the water was cool enough, I put my fingers inside rubbed the sides down.  This worked pretty well for all the light stains.  If your pot is not as nasty stained as mine was this would definitely be a good choice for you.  I may use this for upkeep now.

 

Here is what it looked like after just the comet and water:

 

 

 

The second method I tried was making a paste of lemon juice and baking soda.  This smelled so nice!  I dipped a cloth into the paste and used it to scrub the inside of the pot.  It worked SOOO WELL!  The stains just came away with almost no effort at all.  After I was done, I looked around my kitchen for other things that could be benefitted by this little paste. 

 

Here is what it looked like after the lemon and baking soda:

 

 

 

Here are some other methods I read about but didn't need to use to clean my coffee pot:

1. Combine a mixture of 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water and run it through the coffee perk 2 times.  After that, let the mixture sit in the coffee pot for a short while and then scrub the pot.
2. I have heard that you can use a toothbrush and toothpaste to scrub the pot clean.
3. SOS pads work very well.
4. Baking soda on a sponge is another option.
5. Make a paste of salt and vinegar (spread over it, leave on surface for a while and then wash off a few hours later).

Tackle it Tuesday

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This week, I tackled under my kitchen sink.  I have tried tiding before, but without good storage solutions, things just got messy again as soon as someone else went under there to get anything.  So when I looked under my kitchen counter and found this travesty, I knew I had to do something.

So I looked around to see what ideas I could find.  I came up with two things.  A magazine holder and some wipes containers.  I had a few extra wipes containers around from times we happened to pick up the individual packs instead of the box of refills we usually pick up. 

I used the magazine holder to store things like saran wrap and sandwich bags (I am going to get one more to make it a bit better, but this will do for now.  I used the wipes containers to store folded grocery bags and blue recycling bags.  This is what it looked like when I was done.  I will say that it has been a couple of days and it still looks neat and tidy!  (Only two things have changed, the blue bags are beside the other containers now, not underneath and the blue can in the back is now gone to recycling as well.)  I am waiting for another wipes container to become available and then I will store my garbage bags in that one.  The labels are just mailing labels and sharpie marker so they are not pretty, but they are clear and obvious and everyone knows what everything is.  I just love how much better everything looks!

 

Tackle it Tuesday

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I did a lot of tackles this week, but I didn't take pics of most of them.  I sorted through Little Prince's clothes, I sorted through Princes Sniffle Fritz's clothes, I sorted through Princess Magpie's clothes, I sorted through the laundry room, I cleaned and organized their bedroom, and more besides.  But for my tackle, I am going to share some organization I did in my kitchen. 

 

Last week, I attempted to put labels on my containers in my kitchen, they were basic, but I just wanted something to let me know at a glance what was in stuff. 

 

It looked pretty good when I was done.  But the next day it began to look like this: 

 

 

And some containers lost their labels altogether:

 

 

 

Little story about that piece of paper taped to that one cannister . . . apparently sleep-deprived, exhausted mommy's should NOT put labels on things.  I labelled two things sugar.  NEITHER one was sugar!!!  One was a sweetener and one was SALT!!!!  Guess which one I put in Princess Belle's tea??  SALT!  She was not impressed, it didn't help that I was laughing so hard I couldn't talk when she told me her tea tasted bad and I figured out why.  So, she took a peice of paper and put a new label on the cannister so nobody else would suffer like she did.

 

Anyway, on with todays tackle.  Today, I fixed the labels.  It still isn't what I really want, but it does look MUCH better.  Everything is sticking and everything is labelled correctly . . . I think . . . as far as I know.

 

Here is what I came up with for today:

 

 

Tackle it Tuesday

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I have one area of the house that is NOT organized.  It is the room that everything gets put into when it has no place to go in this house that is WAY too small.  It is my bedroom, home office, storage area and general place to hang out when Little Prince is sleeping.  I like to use bookshelves for my clothes instead of dressers.  I use dressers in other areas for other things, but I do not like to put my clothes in them.  But then, in a room that has a lot of people going in and out of, my clothes get messed up. Stuff gets piled on it, and it begins to look shameful, embarressingly messy, like the pic below. The only reason I am showing it at all is because I have a better picture to follow.

 

 

So, I made a trip to the dollar store and found some storage solutions. I began to purge some clothes that were now too big since I have been losing weight and I began to organize the piles again and this is what I came up with.

The top shelf has one basket for casual shirts and one for dressy shirts.  The second shelf has one basket for jeans and one for casual pants.  And the bottom shelf has a basket for jammies and one for summer things that I can't wear right now.  The little box with the lid has all my unmentionables and the little boxes organize the other clutter.  One for my makeup and shampoo, one for other odds and ends like the measuring tape, picture hanging kit and studfinder, and one for my homeschooling bits likes pencils, pens, crayons and erasers.  All in all, it looks great.  Every container came from the dollar store, but they are all canvas and look great!  The whole thing cost me less than $20!

I LOVE this and Prince Charming said that this looks so good, I could do his too.  LOL

Tackle it Tuesday

 

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I have been working on my kitchen.  I know I am only going to be here for about 5 months, but this kitchen is driving my crazy, so I decided to get it a little more organized.  Here is what I did

 Before:
The freezer was just a jumble of mixed up things.

AFTER: 

The freezer isn't as well organized as I would like, I have some organization items I want to get, but this is better.  The container on it side, holds all the stuff that I have saved to make broth or soup out of.  The red container holds frozen veggies.  There is bread and buns on the side of that a two little bags in the front.  

Before: 

Bags and Bags of crusts of bread that I have saved to make bread pudding, strata, or stuffing.  

After:  

Bread crusts combined to one bag, margarine and frozen herbs moved to the door, and bottles of frozen broth still on the door. 

Tackle it Tuesday

 

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I have been working on my kitchen.  I know I am only going to be here for about 5 months, but this kitchen is driving my crazy, so I decided to get it a little more organized.  Here is what I did

 Before: 

The pantry before was a problem.  It was so deep that I was always losing track of what was in my piles of containers.  

 This shelf looked messy and was underutilized.  And the wheel cart was just messy stuck there beside it.

 The diaper station was a MESS and the shelves looked messy.

After: 
The kitchen is still too small and has too many functions (kitchen, office, homeschool, book storage) but this is a better use of space and makes the kitchen feel so much more spacious and organized.

This shelf is being used much better.  I like the idea of the containers, but I would rather having some nicer containers such as nice glass ones, or something like that.

 The pantry is cleared and organized, with two shelves for cans, two shelves for appliances, and cleaners on the top shelf.

 This chalk board is our grocery list.  Those two giant wooden paddles, I got at a restaurant that was closing out. 

 My diaper station was moved and I put my deep fryer and some cannisters on the bakers rack.  I LOVE my little collection of glass cannisters I have gotten at the thrift shop.

 This area is still not completely done, I want to get a wicker basket for the stuff on top of the shelf and I want to cut down on a little of the clutter, but it is so much better.

And  for the cupboards that I forgot to take a before picture of:

And the parts of my kitchen previously tackled: